Smithfield has traded meat on the same London ground for about a thousand years
In the Middle Ages it was a grassy stretch outside the city wall called Smooth Field, handy for grazing and near the River Fleet for water. Livestock dealers moved in, and Smithfield's market, dating from the 10th century, is now the last wholesale market still operating in the City of London.
Street names remember the animals. Cow Cross Street and Cock Lane survive, while Chick Lane, Duck Lane and Goose Alley vanished in Victorian redevelopment. The grand covered market that dominates the area today was came from the Victorian architect Sir Horace Jones and now has listed status; when parts fell into disuse and faced demolition, a 2012 public inquiry backed a plan to preserve the district's character.
Much of the neighbourhood grew from one man's gratitude. In 1123 Henry I granted land at the request of Rahere, a prior grateful for his own recovery from illness, to found St Bartholomew's Priory. Its church, St Bartholomew-the-Great, is the oldest surviving church building in the City, having escaped the Great Fire of 1666, and the priory's care for the sick continues in St Bartholomew's Hospital, refounded by Henry VIII in 1546. The priory also launched Bartholomew Fair in 1133, a four-day summer cloth market and festival that drew all classes until the authorities shut it in 1855 for rowdiness.
The open ground made a natural stage. Edward III held a seven-day tournament there in 1374, and in 1390 Richard II staged famous jousts with sixty knights, preparations supervised by Geoffrey Chaucer as a royal clerk. Smithfield was also, with Tyburn, London's main place of public execution for centuries: William Wallace died there in 1305, and Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants' Revolt, was struck down by the Lord Mayor there in 1381.
Religious upheaval left its mark too. Around fifty Protestants were put to death there under Mary I. Nearby, the Charterhouse monastery was dissolved at the Reformation and refounded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 as a charity, which gave rise to the school of the same name.
Source: Smithfield, London
